Beyond Layoff

Co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak's interview in the sidelines of ET Global Business Summit is making headlines.  During a wide-ranging Q&A , Wozniak responded to a few questions on Indian and India in a candid way that is making headlines. Q: What are your views on India? Do you think a global tech company can emerge from here? A: I am not an anthropologist and I don’t know the culture of India well enough. I don’t see those big advances in tech companies. What is the biggest tech company here, Infosys maybe? I just don’t see that sort of thing coming out of Infosys and I have done keynotes for them three times.  Q: What is the missing link here? A: The culture here is one of success based upon academic excellence, studying, learning, practising and having a good job and a great life. For upper India, not the lower. I see two Indias. That’s a lot like Singapore study, study, work hard and you get an MBA, you will have a Mercedes but where is the creativity? ...

Last week, the Indian media ran headlines announcing layoffs at top companies:   "Infosys, Wipro laid off 1% of its workforce in last six months" - Times Now IT firm's headcount drops by over 3k in 3 months - Deccan Herald  One needs to read beyond the headline to understand the facts. It is customary for software service firms to announce headcount - number of people employed - any major changes during the quarter. During recent earnings announcements, the companies indicated: Wipro has reduced its head count by over 3,000 in the second quarter. The company, that had 1,66,790 people working under it at the end of June quarter, saw its workforce down by 3,031 (1.8%) to 1,63,759 at the end of the second quarter ended September 30, 2016. Infosys also indicated that in the first quarter, it had reduced its head count by 1,811 (0.9%) from 2,00,364 to 1,98,553 employees A reduction of 1.8% and 0.9% of workforce by IT majors should not be news. This seems t...

A couple of days ago, we looked at NASSCOM''s forecast of "Indian IT sector to see up to 38% fewer jobs this fiscal" This week, ZDNet posted an analysis "It's time for TCS, Wipro, and Infosys to say goodbye to double-digit growth forever" The results from the most recent quarter that ended in June 2017 are just in and there are no surprises here amongst the big three in Indian IT. Using this impetus to wean themselves off of low-end work and gravitate towards more value-added assignments could save Indian IT. TCS, India's largest IT services company, posted a 5.2-percent growth in revenues (in dollar terms versus a year ago) as well as a 7-percent drop in net profit. Mint newspaper, observing that it was the company's "11th consecutive quarter when the company has either under-performed or at best managed to match analysts estimates" called it a result of "unimaginative leadership" in a separate piece, which is an un...

You are probably referring to “ layoff of IT professionals in India” that is generating a lot of news. Let us start by looking at the basics. Indian software service companies generally do NOT resort to “layoffs” or shutdown entire business units and retrench people enmasse. By doing so, they will become subject to labor laws and other government regulations. What they do instead is the following: Wait for natural attrition and slow-down hiring - The attrition in Indian IT has been in the 10–15 percent range Instruct individual managers to seek the help of HR to initiate “Performance Improvement plan” for the bottom percentile of people. For a large company like Cognizant, TCS or Wipro, the ‘bottom 5–10 percent” of people will account for 10–20,000 people. Such a large number of people being “nudged out” becomes news; which the Indian media calls it ‘layoff’ A while ago, I blogged about Cloud Computing Architects (link) . Architects working for consulting firms have to sta...

This was an interesting question from an online forum. Another similar question that came up. Is it true that Cognizant is planning a mass layoff in the upcoming months? Rumours has it there are plans to layoff as many as 20,000 people from the company. As a result there has been a delay in the appraisal cycle as well. Seniors or any people well informed kindly shed some light into it. To respond, let us start by looking at the basics: The business model in the western /developed countries are much more ‘business friendly’ and many states in the US have "right to hire" or “employment at will” laws. What this means is simple: Employers can terminate employees “without cause,” just like employees can leave a job without giving a lengthy notice period. However, employees who are part of such involuntary termination can file for ‘unemployment benefits’ till they find another job. Software service companies in India operate in the same global environments...

Forum For IT Employees ( FITE ) continues to get a lot of media attention An IT Workers’ Union: Outlandish Or A Sign Of The Times? Bloomberg wonders, adding "India’s software services industry faces a twin challenge: U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist policies and automation. And as companies lay off staff, a group of employees is now trying to form an IT workers’ union. There’s been a growing sense of insecurity among the IT professionals over the last few years, said Elavarasan Raja, a 27-year-old IT worker from Pune. That’s led the group to try and form a union to better protect employees’ welfare, said Raja who is part of the group. Called the Forum For IT Employees, the group now has around 3,000 members and chapters in nine cities, including its headquarters in Chennai, and in prominent IT hubs like Bengaluru and Pune, according to Raja. The group, in a recent press release, alleged that Cognizant Technology Solutions was illegally terminating thousands of emp...

Hiring and firing are a common business practice in the west. The typical American spends about 4.2 years in a job ( link ) and sometimes leaves for better opportunity and at other times may be fired or laid off. The phenomena was glorified by reality TV shows like The Apprentice with Donald Trump’s punchline “You’re Fired”   ! Googled image Even considering the fact that layoffs are a common business practice in the west, the impact of a job loss is hard on individuals. Many psychologists and researchers classify “Job Loss” among the top 5 stressors for people, ranked with the “Death of a loved one,” Divorce, and Major Illness! Let us switch to layoffs in India, more specifically layoffs in Indian IT which is in the news a lot. The news of layoffs come at a time of additional scrutiny on employment-visas in the US, UK, Australia and elsewhere, and a general slowdown in the Indian IT (my earlier response to a question). For those laid off involuntarily,...

Every year, about 400,000 graduates with Engineering and Technology degrees from varying branches/disciplines graduate from universities in India. In addition, hundreds of thousands graduate with other degrees, including computer applications, commerce, science and arts.  In the past years, companies like Infosys, Wipro, TCS and others would go to campuses and hire tens of thousands of Tech graduates and send them through boot-camp like training that focused on programming and software engineering. Googled image Years ago, when I first started my career in IT, my manager – a seasoned veteran – gave me a simple piece of advice that holds true to date. When I went to him for advice for career planning he ended with the old Chinese quote “Give a man a fish and you feed him for the day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for life” Source (beliefnet) In 2017, this hiring has slowed considerably and 2018 may be no different.  If you are a fresh graduate, y...

As we know that there are few IT giants, who are asking their employees to leave organization in good terms. So, my query is, will it affect SAP SD Consultants (SAP Core Module Consultants)? My Experience in SAP SD is 2 to 3 Years. Please Explain!!! Let us start by understanding the context of ‘layoffs’ Check out My2cents on that topic “ What is the reason behind the layoffs in IT firms in India? Is it related to the H-1B visa, or some other reason?”)  Let us look at the question from a couple of angles Are SAP SD skills marketable? The skills certainly seem marketable. There are a few hundred jobs posted on LinkedIn (India), many posted by Infosys, Wipro, HCL etc. Will a company retain SAP SD consultant on long-term bench ? Let us assume you work for a services firm (“IT Giant”) that just lost a large account where dozens of SAP SD Consultants worked in a support role. After waiting for a while, they may decide to layoff *all* the folks on bench for more than 2-mon...

I happen to be a product of Indian IT. Having lived and worked in a dozen countries across across three continents, I have seen layoffs and its impact up-close. The question is very apt and timely given the news accounts of ‘thousands’ of layoffs by Indian IT Firms. (My2cents on that topic “ What is the reason behind the layoffs in IT firms in India? Is it related to the H-1B visa, or some other reason?”)  Although the Indian media is fixated on the term ‘layoff,’ some of it is voluntary headcount reduction etc. In the short-term, layoff is hard. Loosing a job is hard for obvious reasons. However, I have also seen many successful guys and ladies use the opportunity for self-reflection. If you are (relatively) young and happen to be laid off, you should begin by reflecting on your career thus far - you may realize that jumping back to yet another coding, software engineering or project management role is not really your cup of tea. Listen to your inner self Reboot and re...

This was a question that came to me from an online forum. Expanding on it, the person asked: Is it related to the H-1B visa, or some other reason? What impact will this have? My response follows Years ago, I worked for Infosys and at that time, we had an "assigned curve" based appraisal system. I think it was called ‘CRR’ (Comparative Relative Ranking) where about 5% a pool of employees would get an A+ Next 5% would get an A Another 50% would get a B (or B+) Another 20% would get a B- Remaining 20% would get a C (or Performance Improvement Plan – PIP) The company had about 30-40,000 employees. At any time, few hundred employees would be under the PIP.  Many who got a ‘C’ during a cycle, strived to work hard and improve and some folks banded into PIP for two cycles in a row were asked to ‘seek other opportunities.’ No drama. No news. Of course, the Indian IT sector was booming and many employees graded -rightly or wrongly – into the bottom rungs would ...